Category Archives: holiday beer rules

Okay, so evidently St. Patrick’s Day isn’t just a day this year; it’s a whole friggin’ weekend. Which means that the madness and mayhem will commence tomorrow.

While I’ll personally be laying low this year, as I do around March 17 every year, many others will be running riot over the next four days, drinking beer and whiskey that they seldom if ever otherwise drink, calling anything that’s green “Irish,” including bog-standard lager dyed with food colouring, and generally using the feast day of an Irish saint as an excuse to get plastered. Which is fine.

But if you’re going to “do” St. Patrick’s Day, at least do it right! Which means paying at least a bit of attention to the following:

1) If you must shorten the name, repeat after me, St. Paddy’s Day. Not St. Patty’s Day or plain Patty’s Day. “St. Paddy’s Day.”

2) There are many more Irish whiskeys out there than just Jameson. Try one or two. You might just find yourself drinking Irish whiskey more than just once a year.

3) What I said above about whiskey? It applies equally to Irish stout.

4) If you must do shots — and on a day that is sure to be filled with drinking, I would counsel strongly against them — limit yourself to just one or two. Five or six or more whiskey shots is a sure-fire route to drunkenness and eventual spewing.

5) Wear green, wear funny badges, wear silly hats if you wish, but accept that you are not, in fact, Irish. Not for a day or for a minute. (Unless, of course, you really are Irish.)

6) A cocktail made with crème de menthe is not by definition Irish. Neither is one made with Midori.

9) Lining up to get into a bar is stupid. If there is a line-up, go somewhere else for a drink or two and return later to see if the line-up has dissipated. If it has not, just accept that it was never meant to be.. (The sole exception to this rule is when the line-up is covered, heated and licensed.)

Okay, it’s November still and too early to start writing about – shhhhhh! – Christmas, but December 1 is just around the corner and that’s when you’ll need to have your advent calendar in place if you want to have (almost) a month of fun.

Fun? Opening tiny doors to see a cute picture or sample an industrial chocolate? Are you kidding me?

No, not at all. Because the BeerAdvent Calendar I have in mind is big and heavy and filled with an assortment of European beers never or seldom before seen in Canada. And believe me when I tell you that some of them are actually very good.

Of course, I can’t tell you what all the beers are, because that would ruin the surprise, but I can say that they make for an interesting selection. (Yes, I went ahead and opened all the little doors so that I could better report on it.) A dozen of the beers are from Austria, and in truth they are among the least interesting overall, though some are still quite good and others are, um, not what you’d expect.

(That “not what you’d expect” part applies also to a beer from Germany — *cough*day 18*cough* — but I shouldn’t say more lest I give the game away.)

The remainder of the brews are mixed between Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Some are better than others, a few are truly spectacular – (sing it!) on the 23rd day of Christmas my calendar gave to me, a pretty friggin’ awesome beer – and fittingly for December, ten of them are 7% alcohol or stronger.

The Calendar is a product of Craft Beer Importers of Alberta, although I’m told that it’s sold out in its home province. Some are apparently still available in parts of British Columbia, so check the Facebook page for availability and get yours soon.

11. Get out there!: Drinking in situ is one of the most illuminating experiences a beer aficionado can have, whether it’s at a riverside brewpub in a town a few miles away or in a café on the other side of the world. It’s also (usually) a hell of a lot of fun.

That’s it for me in 2009. Enjoy your New Year’s Eve, everyone, and see you all next decade!

It is with some sadness that I learned of the departure of Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher from the pages of the Wall Street Journal. The husband and wife team have been writing insightful and accessible columns on wine in that paper for a dozen years, and have long been one of the few reasons I would pick up the weekend edition. I still have a yellowed copy of their “How to Order Wine in a Restaurant, In 10 Steps,” which is one of the most common sense pieces of wine writing I have ever come across.

Much of Gaiter and Brecher’s work, I have found, is easily transferable to other realms, including beer. And so, in honour of their years of service to imbibophiles, I am going to riff (yet again) on one of their ideas, with my “10 Things to Do with Beer in 2010.”

Learn to appreciate something different: You may not like, say, lambics or highly hopped ales, but that need not mean you shouldn’t try to understand what they’re all about.

Blow apart your preconceptions with a blind tasting: Sampling a slate of beers without knowing what they are can be humbling and illuminating. For extra credit, try using glasses that hide the colour of the beers.

Learn to love low alcohol: Subtlety is sometimes lost in beer tasting circles, so even if you enjoy your fill of session beers now and again, or again and again, much can be learned by taking some time to ponder the nuances of a 3.5% alcohol mild or 5% alcohol kölsch.

Try a beer under different circumstances: Possibly the greatest thing I’ve learned in my twenty or so years writing about beer is the powerful effect of context on taste. Trying a familiar brew under utterly unfamiliar circumstances – early in the morning, say, or under physiologically stressful conditions – can lend keen insight as to its makeup.

Plan a period during which you will not drink the same beer twice: Be it a week or a month, spending some time in beer drinking promiscuity can be both fun and challenging.

Talk about beer without judgement: Be it with beer aficionado friends or the Bud drinker at the end of the bar, you can learn a lot about beer and beer drinking by simply listening to what others have to say.

Drink both beer and wine with an oenophile: Sample some of your favourites and some of his or her favourites and learn from each other.

Buy blindfolded: Not literally, of course, but randomly grabbing stuff off the shelf, or having someone do it for you, can lead to interesting discoveries, and also, it needs be admitted, huge disappointments.

Splurge: Not on a high-priced beer – although feel free to do that, too – but on a totally unnecessary round for a group of friends and acquaintances. There’s no better way to remind yourself of why beer really is the most sociable of beverages.

Spend time with a notepad: Nobody should feel they need to take notes on every beer they drink in order to assure their “beer cred,” but it can be an interesting exercise to from time to time sit down and record flavour and aroma observations. You may even be surprised at how it improves your taste perceptions.

13. Now is Not the Time to Count Calories: There are precious few times in our lives when, as responsible individuals, we get to eat and drink with impunity, to recognize our limits, cast them a friendly wave and continue right on past. The holidays is one of those times.

No, I’m not suggesting that we all go out and get legless and wind up puking on Aunt Louise’s sofa. That’s not only stupid, it’s also not at all fun. What I am saying, though, is that it’s okay to get a little merrier than you might ordinarily, to have that extra piece of cake and to indulge in that splendid but calorie-laden beer.

As M.F.K. Fisher once wrote about the ideal dining companions, it is important to approach the holidays, as it is the table, “with the right mix of abandon and restraint.”

11. The Following Phrases Shall be Banned: “Wishing you a hoppy new year;” “Beery Christmas;” “Happy new beer;” “Hoppy new beer;” “Merry Beermas;” “Hoppy Christmas and merry new beer;” and “Malty Christmas and hoppy new year.”

10. Now Is Not the Time to Go All “Locavore”: Eat local, drink local, hell, exist local at all other times of the year, if you wish, but not now. This is the season of indulgence, and you should use it as an excuse to drink from the full-to-the-brim cup of the brewing world.

Belgium; San Diego; Trieste; Japan; Victoria (B.C. or Oz): sip with enthusiasm of it all!